How to Convey Tardiness to an Employee Using a Memo

Employee tardiness affects your organization on several fronts: it leaves your organization vulnerable when there are not enough hands on deck, creates strife between employees, and costs you money if not correctly documented and addressed when it comes to paying your employees. Knowing the potential harm to your organization, you should have the tools to deal with employee tardiness efficiently. One way of doing so is through an employee memo, which is an essential part of disciplining employees who are chronically tardy.

Check your organization's policies on employee tardiness. Your organization should have a policy that defines what constitutes tardiness, how employees who are tardy are disciplined, and what the ultimate disciplinary action is for employees who are regularly tardy. Knowing your company's policy is essential to using memos to notify employees of policy violations.

Determine what you as a supervisor can do about employee tardiness. Your organization's tardiness policy should address how the employee's supervisor will convey policy violation, and what disciplinary actions the supervisor can use to address the employee's tardiness. Your memos should be in line with the policy, as violating your organization's policy can impact you negatively as a supervisor.

Make sure you have instances of the employee's tardiness documented. Without the right documentation detailing the dates and times of the employee's instances of tardiness, you leave yourself and your organization open to defending yourself legally should your attempts to discipline the employee result in termination.

Determine whether your organization has a standard memo in place to address employee tardiness. Ask your human resources administrator for any documents your organization may use to inform employees about tardiness.

Create a memo, if a standard form is not available, that conveys your message about the employee's tardiness, that includes the following information: your name, the employee's name, the date of the memo, information about any policy regarding tardiness, dates of instances of the employee's tardiness, outlines of any discussions you've had with the employee regarding his tardiness, and consequences of any future tardiness.

Deliver the memo to the employee confidentially and ask the employee to sign a copy of the memo to acknowledge receipt. File the original in the employee's personnel folder, which should be under lock and key.